Russia has no commitments for world community to permit homosexuality propaganda - Lavrov

February 26, 2013, 13:19 UTC+3He recalled that homosexuality was a criminal offence in the Soviet times

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MOSCOW, February 26 (Itar-Tass) – Russia has no commitments for the world community to permit the homosexuality propaganda, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said after the negotiations with his Dutch counterpart Frans Timmermans here on Tuesday.

“We have no commitments to permit the propaganda that is usually quite aggressive,” the Russian minister noted. He voiced doubts over an opportunity to assume such commitments. “We have our moral principles, our historical, cultural, religious traditions, on which our society lives,” he noted. “We do not discriminate against anyone, we do not want the discrimination to be exercised in the opposite direction, when one group of people get the right to promote aggressively their values, which are different from those of a majority of the society, moreover, imposing them on children,” he said.

“The only criterion to discuss these issues is the commitments, which were assumed within universal and pan-European institutes, we have no disagreements in this issue,” Lavrov said.

He recalled that homosexuality was a criminal offence in the Soviet times. “This article in the Criminal Code is abolished a long time ago, and the homosexuals can do their acts absolutely freely and not to be punished for this. This is stipulated in the commitments of all countries not to permit discrimination by any indicator,” he explained.

“In our dialogue with European partners, who give high emotional attention to the propaganda of homosexuality, we draw their attention to much more blatant cases,” the Russian foreign minister recalled. “When the rights are encroached obviously, for instance, the problem of stateless Russian speakers in Latvia and Estonia,” he remarked. “Not granting citizenship to these people, not fulfilling the recommendations of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the Council of Europe, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the authorities of these countries directly violate the right for the participation in the political life, the right to elect and be elected, the right for the full-fledged participation in the economic life,” Lavrov said in conclusion.